I receive quite a few emails asking something along the lines of, “can you help me find a buyer for my domain name?” I don’t broker domain names, so I generally try to get people to think about how they can find a buyer on their own. This is one of those things that if you can do it successfully once, you can replicate it. I want to share some advice on how you can try and find a buyer for domain names you want to sell.

My first piece of advice is to take the keywords from your domain name and plug them in to Google. See what companies advertise for those keywords and see what companies rank organically. Try to find a contact on the website to pitch the domain name or use the contact form. If there is no contact form or if finding the “right” person to contact is difficult, do a Whois search for the company domain name and contact the Whois contact. Many times, that person is either the contact or will forward your email to the appropriate person.

My next piece of advice is to evaluate how the domain name can be used and by what type of company. Think about what type of companies may be interested in buying the domain name, and visit the websites of the obvious buyers (or do a Google search to find companies in those industries). One tip with respect to this is that if you have to come up with some convoluted or tangential reason a company would want to use a domain name, you’ll probably have a tough time selling the domain name. In my experience, some companies are open to buying domain names but don’t want to hear an idea for a marketing strategy that is possible with certain domain names.

My third piece of advice is to use a domain name lead generation website like Lead Refs or Estibot to contact buyers. Be 100% sure you haven’t contacted the same person/company already. I am sure it’s annoying to receive multiple emails from the same person about a domain name, especially if the name is not of interest. I would likely remove obvious domain investors from those leads since your hit rate will likely be lower and it will annoy people who may label you as a spammer.

If your domain name is superior, you may want to have a domain broker at a company like Afternic, Sedo, Aftermarket.com, or Domain Holdings do outbound lead generation on your behalf. Mind you, they will likely only do this if the domain name is valuable and the price is reasonable since they only get paid for this if they close a deal.

If the domain name doesn’t have obvious commercial appeal, selling it via outbound sales channels may not be possible or will be very difficult. For brandable names, it’s more likely that you’ll close a more favorable deal when a buyer comes to you. I recommend listing them on various aftermarket websites and making sure there’s a “for sale” notice on the landing page.

About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has sold seven figures worth of domain names in the last five years. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest.

I just bought thewaltdisney.com domain. Do you think that domain name has a great value or not? I think it has but I want your opinion. I just contacted Disney through web page but I don’t know if they have any interest in buying domains.

@john Regarding calling the company first. I would suggest if it is a big enough company, find the person who handles their seo/sem. I did this with a travel domain name this year and it turned out the right thing to do as I sold them on it. I congratulated him on a recent 120k domain name they recently acquired and let them know he name I was selling was going to cost quite a bit less. They liked the domain name and bought.

@pasi: the domain you registered violates trademarks held by the Walt Disney organization. They can certainly get it from you via a UDRP, and you could be hit for damages too. Since you only registered this on March 2nd at GoDaddy, see if you can get them to grace delete it right now. I understand you can request this within a few days of the original registration. Do it now and save yourself a lot of trouble!

@Sonny: are you joking? Do you know how ruthlessly companies like Disney enforce their trademarks? Anyone trying to flog Disney a TM domain will get a very rude awakening probably with a C&D letter, and followed by a UDRP. Pasi, grace delete this now!!

I’m also selling themickeymouse.com, thewaltdisneypictures.com, thedisneypictures, disneypixar.co… So is there any value on those? I also own nokianetwork.com, thenokiaworld.com, nokiauniverse.com and nokiaglobe.com. What are value of those?

Are you serious on those trademark claims? I’m from Finland, so how USA laws have anything to do with my domains? I have contacted Disney and I want to sell my domains for them. Is there something wrong with me? In Finland Disney has no legal rights to sue me, here’s no suchs laws on Disney’s side. So what I should do now?

I contacted Nokia and asked if they are interested on Nokia-related domains (thenokiaworld.com, nokianetwork.com, nokiauniverse.com, nokiaglobe.com, lumiaphones.com, windowslumia.com) and they had absolutely no interested on protecting Nokia name.

@pasi: You only registered these domains a few days ago. How can you say that you’ve already contacted Nokia and they aren’t interested in protecting their name? The only reason I’m posting a third time is that this is like watching a train wreck. Go to any of the major domain forums like DNForum or Namepros. Check out the section on Legal and / or Trademark domains. You are looking at a whole load of trouble ahead if you don’t grace delete these domains NOW!

From my perspective those names have absolutely no commercial value or appeal. From my untrained legal perspective, they appear to be liabilities. I wouldn’t keep names that are worth nothing but can cost a lot of money in legal bills.

Thanks guys for your advice. I’m just a newbie, and being from Finland doesn’t help at all. You know, your trademark laws (I mean american laws) are just from outer space for me. I don’t know anything about those laws. We have nothing like that here. I can register, for example, our presidents name domain and there’s nothing legal.

And how USA laws have nothing to do with us europeans? Oh well, I have to be careful now. If Disney want’s those domains, or they demands them, I will give up. Nokia had absolutely no interest in domains which was a big surprise.

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